


In Which Mark Witnesses Terrible Things and Dustin Enforces the Roommate Pact

by roaroftheninth



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Fluff and Crack, M/M, Roommates, The New Girl AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-07
Updated: 2013-04-07
Packaged: 2017-12-07 17:44:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/751259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roaroftheninth/pseuds/roaroftheninth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark witnesses Eduardo breaking the roommate pact (and totally doesn't dig it or anything). Dustin lays down the law, Chris wins at gay chicken, and Eduardo has to wear the rule-breaker hat for a week. (This fic is gateway crack and, if read, may lead to harder crack.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which Mark Witnesses Terrible Things and Dustin Enforces the Roommate Pact

**Author's Note:**

  * For [misshiss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misshiss/gifts).



> This is for octokitty, who gave me the prompt (sort of... it took on a terrifying life of its own). I fused in bits of The New Girl and I referenced Justified, just in case any of you are as dorktastic as me and have watched it for the joy that is JMazz. But all you really need to know before reading this fic is that it's gateway crack, and I'm not even sorry, you guys.  
> \--

Mark hates New York. 

Well, he doesn't hate it so much as it hates him. And he could really just take it or leave it, honestly, except that he doesn't really have anywhere else to be. He could move back in with his parents, but _please_. He can code just as well from New York as from anywhere else, he supposes, and Chris, Dustin, and Eduardo are tolerable roommates (okay, they kind of love Mark, and Mark just buries feelings like that at any cost so whatever, and - it's complicated is Mark guesses where he's going with this.)

Mark tries not to like Chris, except for the time right at the beginning when Chris didn't ask what Mark was so afraid of and wordlessly went to Erica's house after she'd kicked Mark out to retrieve Mark's desktop computer for him. Mark tries not to like Dustin, except that Dustin remembered that Mark's mother was coming to visit when Mark didn't, and cleaned the apartment on his behalf. Mark really, really tries not to like Eduardo, not least because he, Dustin, and Chris made a pact that they wouldn't sleep with any new roommates they acquired lest they disturb the balance of things, and that's kind of the direction Mark's feelings for Eduardo want to go in. 

But he also tries not to like Eduardo because of the way Eduardo smiles at him, sidelong and _happy_ , and how Eduardo puts on a new pot of coffee for Mark before he leaves in the morning, and because Eduardo is tall, dark, and handsome in tailored suits and right now he's got some girl pressed up against the wall in the living room while Mark hunkers down behind the island in the kitchen, dying of embarrassment with no option but to stay utterly silent and hope the two of them move it to the bedroom before things get out of hand.

Mark doesn't need anyone's pity; he really doesn't. He's a grown man who barely tolerates other peoples' presence to begin with, and his interests are limited to coding, classics, fencing, and Eduardo fucking smiling at him, which is probably a bizarre combination but Mark does not give, and has never given, a single flying fuck about what other people think of him.

That said, he would probably not openly share that last interest.

Behind him, he can hear the girl that Eduardo is going to town on make some kind of lame moaning noise in her throat, and Eduardo reciprocates even as there's the sound of someone backing into the edge of the kitchen table. Mark thinks, _are you serious_ , at the same time as he gets just the tiniest fraction hard and thinks about how much of an asshole his dick is being right now because your roommate fucking someone on the kitchen table is _not supposed to be hot_. Jesus.

Mark can ignore feelings, okay, but it's pretty hard to ignore the fact that your male roommate making sex noises makes you hard.

Mark hears the sound of a zipper, and his eyes widen in the dark because holy fuck, he is not sticking around for this. Heavy-duty making out is one thing, but if there are going to be orgasms that is Mark's cue to _leave_. 

He eases himself sideways on the floor to the edge of the island and then climbs up into a crouch. Once he makes it to the easy chair, he's home-free; Eduardo's view of the rest of the room is blocked by the couch and the edge of the big-screen TV Dustin insisted they purchase. But between the island and the easy chair is eight feet of open floor and Mark is not really a ninja.

He hears the table creak, like someone is putting weight onto it, and Mark figures it's now or never because damned if he's going to let his (not-so) virgin ears be soiled by his roommate giving it to a stranger in their kitchen. Which is so not okay, by the way; Dustin would have loudly announced his presence by now, were he in Mark's position, and proclaimed that he who fucks on any communal furniture must wear a hat that says, "I fucked on the communal furniture and I'm an asshole" for a week.

But Mark doesn't have Dustin's recklessness or the ability not to be embarrassed if he had to talk to a half-naked Eduardo, so he's making a break for it.

Mark, laptop tucked under one arm - because he's not leaving his baby behind - begins to move as stealthily as possible across the floor. None of the (arousing) horrible sex noises so much as falter, so Mark figures he's in the clear. He's halfway across when there are voices in the hallway. He freezes, wondering if they will get Eduardo's attention, _praying_ that it's not Chris and Dustin, but after what seems like an interminable moment, the voices fade away.

Mark doesn't waste any time continuing on his journey. He's six feet across, then seven, then all the way. He rises into a bent-over walk, because victory is his, except that his shoulder catches the floor lamp. It falls to the carpet with a muffled _thump_.

Any and all sex noises stop immediately. Mark cringes as he hears the sound of footsteps and the lights come on, and he can only stand slowly upright and meet two sets of eyes. The woman isn't a stranger after all; she's Christy, from downstairs in 4D, and she looks _pissed_. Eduardo is the one standing by the light switch, his hair a mess and his pants hastily zipped but not done up, and he doesn't look pissed so much as really confused. Mark thinks, _I could kiss that ridiculously stupid look right off your face,_ and then he wants to stab himself in the eye because _are you serious_.

"Were you _watching_ us?" Christy demands, and she doesn't even bother to tug her skirt down; that is literally how little she cares about Mark Zuckerberg in general and Mark Zuckerberg seeing more of her than he should in particular.

"I would rather be hit by a train," Mark replies.

"What are you doing in here, Mark?" That's Eduardo, and he still looks - Mark's mouth settles into a grim line. His brain was going to finish that sentence with 'fuckable', and Mark just - he can't. His brain is supposed to work in ones and zeroes and predictable conclusions. 'Fuckable' belongs somewhere else. Cosmo magazine, maybe. Eduardo reads those. He would know.

"I was in the kitchen, engaging in the totally normal activity of re-heating pizza while I coded on my laptop, and then you two came in here and I was trapped."

"You've been here the whole time?" Christy demands.

Mark's eyes narrow. He's good at being aggressive and cutting. He'd rather do that then be moon-eyed over Eduardo. "Re-heating pizza is an activity that belongs in the kitchen. Having sex with Eduardo is an activity that belongs in Eduardo's bedroom. I am not the deviant here."

Christy rolls her eyes and stands up, adjusting her clothes. "This is why grown men shouldn't have roommates," she says to nobody in particular. Snatching up her purse, she stalks out. Neither Mark nor Eduardo move until the door closes behind her. 

"You know we're not supposed to have sex on the communal furniture," Mark says.

"I know." Eduardo's eyes are huge, the way they get when he's embarrassed or surprised or aroused, all three of which he's probably feeling in some capacity right now. He steps away from the light switch and takes a few steps toward Mark. "How much did you see?"

"Hear," Mark corrects him. "And literally everything."

Eduardo is close enough now that Mark can see the way the top four buttons on his shirt are undone. His eyes get stuck there, hovering somewhere around Eduardo's collarbone. He doesn't even hear what Eduardo says next, until Eduardo says, unsure, "Mark?"

"What?" Mark snaps, probably more aggressively than he needs to.

"I said I'm sorry and I asked if you could not tell Chris and Dustin about this," Eduardo says.

"Right," Mark replies, and he just wants to flee, honestly. Mark was not cut out to navigate his way through outrageous social situations like this.

"Mark," Eduardo says again, and when Mark doesn't say anything, he adds, "Look at me?"

Mark does, just because he has never backed down from a challenge. "Your hair looks ridiculous," he says crisply.

Eduardo looks like he's steeling himself for something, and before Mark's brain can send off danger flares, he has a hand on Mark's hip and is pulling him closer. "Does it still look ridiculous from this angle?" His voice has gone quiet.

Mark thinks, _fuck_ , because there is heat spiraling out from where Eduardo's hand is settled on his hip and Mark is not holding it together that well. "What are you doing?"

"When I knew Christy and I were coming up here, I Facebooked all of you guys, letting you know I was bringing someone up. Chris and Dustin messaged me back saying that they were out anyway. And you..." He reaches into the pouch pocket of Mark's hoodie, and Mark's stomach does a dip. Eduardo pulls out Mark's cell phone and holds it up. "You didn't answer me, but Facebook told me you saw it."

Mark frowns. "So?"

Eduardo leans down, so close that their foreheads almost touch. "So you knew that would happen. And you stayed."

Mark wants to hunt down and kill the person who invented Facebook.

"Don't read too much into it," he says. "I thought I could finish what I was doing before you came in."

Eduardo looks at him searchingly for a moment, and then he releases Mark and steps back. "Okay," he says simply.

Mark is annoyed; annoyed at what Eduardo thinks is his own perceptiveness, annoyed at himself for getting into this situation, and annoyed at the way the warmth is gone now, that came from everywhere Eduardo's body was touching his. Mark, caught by a sudden surge of annoyance and _want_ , reaches out and curls his fingers into Eduardo's collar.

Eduardo doesn't have to be asked twice.

He steps forward and kisses Mark, long and slow and warm, and Mark's entire insides do a violent twist when Eduardo's tongue finds its way in, because _this is not a church kiss or a roommate kiss or even a first date kiss_. It's a long moment before Mark's brain stops short-circuiting. 

"What - " Mark breaks away "is this." His heart is racing, and the part of his brain that has _all the feelings for some fucking reason_ is demanding to know what he's doing, but he ignores that part because clearly that part makes bad judgment calls.

"I don't know," Eduardo says. He abruptly smooths his hair down and takes an embarrassed step back. "I thought - I'm - you know what, I think I had something to do."

He is gone from the apartment so fast that Mark barely has time to register the fact that Eduardo's pants are still undone and he's still got an infuriatingly endearing smear of lipstick on his cheek. 

\--

It's an entire week jam-packed with military-grade avoidance tactics on the parts of both Mark and Eduardo before Chris and Dustin corner Mark in the kitchen.

"What is going on with you and Wardo," Dustin demands. "You're acting like a Weirdy."

"I'm not acting like a - Weirdy," Mark says, and he's confident that Dustin uses these words just to give himself joy if other people repeat them and sound like idiots.

"A Weirdy McBeardy," Dustin emphasizes. "So is Wardo. Wardo the Weirdy. So what's up."

"Nothing's up. I have things to do." Mark tries to evade them, but Chris gets in the way.

"When things are weird in the apartment for some people, things are weird for all of us," Chris says. "Help us help you, Mark."

Mark gives him a disgruntled look. "Wardo accidentally put his mouth on my face."

"Because you were bitten by a snake and he had to suck the poison out?" Dustin asks. 

Chris glances at him. "I think 'accidentally put his mouth on my face' is Zuckerbergian for - "

"Making mouth babies," Dustin realizes. "Ewww."

Chris has no idea how he lives in a loft with three other adults and two of them can't say the word 'kissing'.

"You realize you broke the pact," Dustin is saying.

"You did break the pact," Chris agrees.

"I didn't sleep with him," Mark protests.

"You know what happens now," Dustin says, ignoring that. "We _all_ have to play tonsil hockey with Eduardo so that things aren't weird."

"That was a stupid part of the pact when we made it and it's stupid now," Mark says flatly.

"It's not stupid, it's a way to keep the playing field level. We have to stop the insanity," Dustin informs him. "Do you want things to go back to normal or not?"

Mark turns to Chris, as the voice of reason. "This is stupid."

"I know." Chris shrugs. "But kind of funny."

That's when Mark knows that all is lost.

It's either because Mark has the worst luck in the universe or Eduardo does that the latter walks into the apartment at precisely that moment. 

"No, no, run away," Mark says weakly, but Eduardo doesn't take his word for it and just spends a moment looking vaguely puzzled before Dustin pounces.

"Mark broke the pact," he announces.

"The - what pact?" Eduardo is looking around at them all now and he looks like he's not sure whether he should be nervous or not.

"The pact we made. Before you moved in." Dustin makes a sweeping gesture. "My fellow roommates and I made a pact that if any of us engaged in activity of a romantic nature with a new roommate, we all had to do it in order to make the weird go away."

"Wait." Eduardo sounds disbelieving. "You all had to do what? Engage in romantic activity with the new roommate?"

"Rules are rules," Chris says, trying not to laugh.

"And you think that will make things _less_ weird?" Eduardo demands.

"We were three guys sharing a loft," Chris clarifies, taking pity on him. "We thought that if any of us got into any shinanigans with a new roommate, it could lead to jealousy and in-fighting and upset the balance in the apartment. So we made a pact that was intended to stop any of us from doing that. I don't think we really expected having to follow through with it."

"So don't follow through with it," Eduardo says.

"It's - actually kind of logical," Mark admits. He didn't think about it this way before, but maybe it's true that if they _all_ swap spit with Eduardo, it will be like none of them did it. Chris and Dustin doing it will cancel out Mark doing it. And things will _have_ to stop being weird.

"No offense, Dustin, but I don't want to make out with you," Eduardo says, looking increasingly panicked now that he's lost his only ally.

Dustin snorts. "Trust me, I'd rather lick a bus station seat than make out with you, but it has to be done in the name of the law."

"That's a little harsh," Eduardo says, taken aback.

"To be fair, he _has_ licked a bus station seat," Chris puts in.

"I was drunk and you told me that the the red ones taste like strawberries and the orange ones taste like snozzberries!" Dustin protests, outraged.

"What's a snozzberry?" Eduardo asks.

"Also what I would have asked," Chris replies, amused.

Dustin folds his arms. "One day, Karma is going to get you," he says loftily.

"Yeah, but you'd miss me."

"Are we getting this over with or not?" Mark pipes up.

"All right, fine," Eduardo says, exasperated. "Let's just - fine."

"Okay." Dustin takes a step forward at the same time as Eduardo takes one. "Wow, that is close."

"Gonna have to get closer," Eduardo says, and for a split second there's something cheerily vindictive in his tone that Mark wants to smile at.

"Yep." Dustin takes a step closer, but leans back.

"Try not to be so eager, you guys," Chris says, struggling with ill-concealed mirth.

Dustin stops a foot away from Eduardo and leans forward with his eyes squeezed shut. Eduardo takes a step forward and gets right up in Dustin's personal space at the same moment as Dustin sort of lunges.

"I think my teeth hit your teeth," Dustin complains.

"I think your teeth hit my chin," Eduardo corrects. "And I think you deserved that for coming at me with teeth anyway."

"Well, it counts," Dustin says brightly. "Chris, you're up."

"Is this going to take all afternoon - "

Mark's question dies as Chris hops off his chair, grabs Eduardo by the back of the head, and plants one on him. Eduardo makes a startled sound in the back of his throat and then catches Chris by the arms. 

"This is like out of the movies," Dustin says, in awe.

"Okay, okay, we get it, you win at gay chicken," Mark says grumpily.

Chris pulls away and takes a flourishing bow. "Thank you, Mark."

Eduardo still looks more shell-shocked that Mark would like. Mark grabs him by the arm and steers him away from the others.

"Out of curiosity," Eduardo says, "if I wanted to hypothetically kiss you again, at some hypothetical juncture, would I have to do all of that again?"

"I don't know. What if I said yes?" Mark folds his arms.

"Oh, I'd still kiss you," Eduardo says. "I'd just hire a lawyer first."

Mark frowns. "Why?"

"To get you out of that pact," Eduardo tells him, smiling, and Mark's heart rate speeds up because the way Eduardo is looking at him, Mark just knows - 

"You forgot this," Dustin interrupts cheerfully, and wedges a hat onto Eduardo's head.

"What is this?" Eduardo asks, looking up at it in vain.

Mark sighs. "It says, _I fucked on the communal furniture and I'm an asshole_." 

"How long do I have to wear this?" Eduardo asks, sounding put-upon.

"Only a week," Chris replies, unmoved and too goddamn cheerful.

"You did fuck on the communal furniture," Mark says.

"This apartment has too many rules," Eduardo mutters darkly.

"Just be glad it wasn't Mark you fucked on the communal furniture," Dustin says. "That whole situation just now would have been _way_ more awkward."

"In that case, would he have to wear the hat for three weeks?" Chris asks.

Eduardo hastily retreats to the bedroom as both of them crack up.

Mark waits a beat, and follows him.


End file.
